Do Big Money Bonuses Really Increase Job Performance?

Some top executives are now paid very large one-off bonuses for meeting their performance targets. The theory is that setting and rewarding the attainment of targets increases performance. It\\\\\\\'s like tempting the mouse with a piece of cheese. But, do humans really behave like mice?

For one thing we have an impressive capacity for fouling ourselves up. An incentive can be both a blessing and a curse because while it should motivate us, it can just as easily psych us out. Actual task performance may suffer because we\\\\\\\'re obsessing about the money. Also, a bigger prize can make us more tightly focussed, but a tight focus is not useful for some tasks - for example those that involve creativity.

Consequently behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely and colleagues hypothesised that big bonuses might actually decrease people\\\\\\\'s performance, and they set out to prove it (Ariely et al., 2004). To make the big bonuses sufficiently \\\\\\\'big\\\\\\\' they started out with an experiment in a place where even a psychologist\\\\\\\'s grant money is a King\\\\\\\'s ransom: rural India.

There, they recruited local people whose standard of living was low: 26% had no formal education, only half owned TVs, none had a car and only a tiny minority had a telephone in the house. There were three payments levels: 4, 40 or 400 rupees, where 400 rupees was roughly equivalent to a month\\\\\\\'s salary.

Participants were given eight different tasks testing how the payment levels affected performance. Some tasks involved problem-solving skills, others concentration, and others required creativity:

• Packing quarters: participants had to pack metal pieces into a wooden crate. This required creativity to fit all the pieces inside.
• Simon: an electronic memory game that involves copying the sequence of flashing lights. You can play it here.
• Labyrinth: a game involving tilting a maze to negotiate a ball bearing to the \\\\\\\'finish\\\\\\\' position while avoiding traps (holes in the board). This tested motor performance.

In 8 of the 9 tasks, the promise of a bigger bonus actually significantly decreased people\\\\\\\'s performance.The results surprised even the researchers. In 8 of the 9 tasks, the promise of a bigger bonus actually significantly decreased people\\\\\\\'s performance. It seemed that rather than motivating participants, the lure of a month\\\\\\\'s salary was actually putting people off.

While these results were impressive, the researchers wanted to replicate them in the US. So they carried out a similar set of experiments with students at MIT using payment levels of $0, $150 and $300. Even at the top level this was not equivalent to a month\\\\\\\'s income, but it was still a fair amount of money for students.

Despite a completely different cultural setting, the results were much the same as in India: pay did not increase performance, in fact it lead to worse performance.

This study raises a number of questions about the way monetary incentives are often used to reward performance:

• Should organisations pay big bonuses to improve executives\\\\\\\' performance?
• Could the quality of professional sport be significantly improved if huge amounts of money were not riding on the performance of individual players?
• Might some well-paid actors\\\\\\\' performances be drastically improved if they didn\\\\\\\'t receive such disproportionately large compensation?

Set against the minority who receive these types of large performance bonuses, the majority of people get a fixed salary. Perhaps we really shouldn\\\\\\\'t fiddle about with a system once it works: not just because equality is important but because performances might well be suffering.



Reference

丰厚的奖金一定能提升工作表现吗？

     目前，某些优秀的工作人员因达到目标业绩而一次性得到丰厚的奖金，这样做的根据是，订立目标业绩并对实现者予以奖励可以提升他们的工作表现，就像拿着一片奶酪诱惑老鼠一样。不过，换作人的话，效果相同吗？

    首先来讲，我们本身就拥有能把自己事情搞砸的惊人本事。奖励，既有益处也有害处，因为它既能激励人们，也轻易能让人惶惶不安。实际的工作表现可能会因对金钱的过分在意而受到负面影响。而且，更丰厚的奖励会导致精神和精力的高度集中，但是高度的精神和精力集中并不适用于某些工作中——比如，一些需要发挥创造力的工作。    

     于是，行为经济学家丹.艾瑞尔利教授及其同事提出假设，丰厚的奖金实际上可能会降低工作表现，他们还要进行实验证明这个假设（艾瑞尔利 等，2004）。为确保奖励足够丰厚，研究者们将实验地选在了印度农村，在这里仅仅心理学家的补助就相当于一个国王的身价。

    在这里，他们选择那些生活水平低下的当地人为实验对象，其中26%的人没有接受过正规教育，只有一半人有电视机， 没有一个人有汽车，极少数人家里有电话。 他们的报酬分为三个级别：4卢比，40卢比，400卢比。400卢比大致相当于他们一个月的收入。

    实验对象要完成八个不同的任务，以此来发现报酬级别对表现的影响，其中有的任务要求有解决问题的技巧，有的需要高度注意力，还有的需要发挥创造力。

• 安放铁块：实验对象要将不同的铁块安放进一个木头的框里，这一过程要求操作者发挥创造力把所有铁块安放进去。
• 西蒙：这是一个电子记忆游戏，要求再现不同颜色亮光出现的顺序。
• 迷宫：这个游戏要求摆弄一个迷宫以使一颗滚珠到达‘最终目的地’，同时要绕过板上的洞，这里测试的是动觉能力。

     在9项任务中的8项，丰厚的奖励实际上大大降低了人们的能力表现，这相当于一个月收入的奖励似乎并没有激发更好的表现，反而使他们的表现变差了。

     由于实验结果惊人，研究者们又意图在美国再现这一实验，于是招募了麻省理工的学生进行了一系列相似的实验，这次的酬劳级别为0美元，150美元，300美元，虽然最多的也没有超过实验对象一个月的收入，不过对学生来讲也算是相当可观了。

     结果表明，尽管实验所在的文化背景不同，结果却与印度的非常相像: 报酬没有提升表现，事实上反而降低了表现。

     这个研究对采用金钱刺激来奖励工作表现的一贯做法提出了一连串的疑问：

•   组织机构应该提供丰厚的奖金来提升工作人员的工作表现吗？
•   如果不在个人运动员身上花费大量金钱，职业比赛的质量能显著提高吗？
•   如果不付给本来就收入可观的演员多的离谱的报酬，他们的表演可能大幅提高吗？

    相对于这些有丰厚奖金的少数人来讲，大多数人还是领取固定的薪水，或许我们真的不应否定一个已经证明了行得通的体制，不仅仅因为平等的重要，还因为对工作表现可能造成的负面影响。

    参考文献

    Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N. (2004) Large Stakes and Big Mistakes. CMU Working Paper.